Passenger side blowing hot air
 

I have a 2002 X5 3.0 and this week a passenger noticed no cold air was coming out on his side but it was on mine. Looks like the heater valve is not working which I found out on this forum. Does anyone have a 'how to' replace the valve please or is is it so basic it shouldn't be a problem?

Thanks,

Gary

i had a similar issue. there was a leak in one of the high pressure lines, i brought it to a shop and they put in a gasket, its somewheres behind the dash.

is the condensation building up as well? i had that.

Passenger AC
 

No condensation....the valve has two solenoids..one for passenger, one for driver...the passenger one is stuck.

GW

I am having a similar issue at times. Other people have had similar issues and the cause was too little freon. You may want to have the level checked before you start changing parts out.

I need to do this, but haven't had time.

I double the notion to have the refrigerant level checked before condemning the heater valves. The E53 platform only takes 0.98 lbs of R134a so it is susceptible to any loss in refrigerant.

AC
 

I was going to have the freon checked but if it was low then the driver side wouldn't be pushing out nice cold air....that's why I think it's the valve stuck on the passenger side.

GW

passenger side losing cold air is classic symptom of low freon. there have been a no of posts on this issue.

Look at post #9 in this thread.

http://www.xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-foru...n-problem.html

I don't know if it was actually designed this way on purpose, but it appears that air flow on the drivers side takes priority if there is an issue with low freon and reduced performance of the system.

That's what I thought too. Weasel and my mechanic were correct about the refrigerant (which is not Freon, it's R134a):

http://www.xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-foru...ht-thread.html